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From the HWFC Constitution:

"where faculty are committed to teaching and serving students; where enthusiasm and morale are high; and where faculty professionalism and dedication find full expression, working in harmony with students, staff, and administration to fulfill the mission of the college"

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2 thoughts on “Thoughtful Tuesday”

Anonymity encouraged, eh? Ok. I’m teaching summer school for what I expect is the reason any of us do: a combination of loving our job and looking forward to more interactions with students, and earning a bit more pay to help out…whether it’s for taking care of family members, paying off student loan or other types of debt, making it possible to travel or have other valuable experiences, or taking some of the burden off a partner whose job prospects or pay scale might be less favorable.
I am always surprised that I don’t feel more of a difference between summer school and a normal semester in terms of the energy and time I put into prepping and grading.

I don’t teach in the summer so I can take on other projects that are interesting to me personally and that will hopefully inform my teaching. I have been fortunate to find projects that pay well and allow me to opt out of teaching. I always feel at the end of the spring semester that I am really ready for a break, so I can take a step back, reflect on the previous semesters’ work, and reflect on my teaching as a practice. This time for reflection makes a huge difference in my teaching (I think students get the best of me during the Fall semester). I come back amped up, ready to go, filled with new and exciting ideas and plans. It is all good.
Now, circumstances may change over the next few years, as I will have 2 children in college, and finances might force me to take on a class on two. Only time will tell if this shift in working responsibilities will change my practice overall. I really hope I can preserve my summers as a genuine break from teaching – but if I can’t I think that the HWC campus is a nice place to spend the summer. It is a bit quieter and a lot less hectic. It might be fun to see what teaching is like without all of the simultaneous committee work.
Thanks for the collegial question Realist.